This, ultimately, is the statement Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”) aims to make with “A Statement.” And unlike his hapless protagonists, he handily succeeds.

The movie is based on true events documented by journalist Nathaniel Rich in his 2019 book “Losing Earth: A Recent History,” but McCarthy and his collaborators, including co-writers Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré, dig so deep into the data that they create a sort of scientific experiment themselves. Nearly every line of dialogue was lifted verbatim from the panel’s hundreds of pages of transcripts, and it’s delivered in a setting that feels almost forensically accurate.

The most optimistic member of this cohort is moderator Tom Jorling (Paul Rudd), who has gathered everyone to alert the world to the growing environmental emergency. He’s organized four sessions over two days, during which the group can hash out the language, reach a consensus and bring their pronouncement straight to Congress.

He has not, however, accounted for the impact of each personality. MIT nuclear engineer David Rose (John Turturro), for example, arrives with reams of evidence that society is unable to shift fast enough to make changes worthwhile. Energy Department representative David Slade (Paul Giamatti) is ready to pour cold water on any ideas he knows Congress will reject. Ecologist George Woodwell (Dylan Baker) and environmentalist Rafe Pomerance (Evan Peters) cannot stomach the thought of compromise, while meteorologist John Perry (Jason Clarke) sees himself as a practical gadfly, the one sane voice amid so much overreaction. Meanwhile, public health scholar Annemarie Crocetti (Amy Ryan) observes in dismayed silence, simultaneously overlooked and appalled by the men peacocking around her.

It is almost inconceivable that a funny, suspenseful and entirely engaging film could be made out of the transcripts of bureaucrats arguing over words like “prudence,” “jurisdiction” and “mandates.” But wisely, McCarthy leans so far in that he allows us to become participants as well.

We can smell the smoke in the amber ashtrays, see the dust hovering around the slide projector, taste the lukewarm letdown of a chafing-dish meal. Anyone who’s been in a never-ending meeting or had to hide their annoyance at a misguided colleague will feel this experience in their bones. But it’s to McCarthy’s credit that anyone who hasn’t will, too.

In many ways, he approaches the project like a play, keeping the setting tight and bringing in the highest-level performers to distinguish each role. It’s no coincidence that the most experienced actors handle this difficult task with the greatest ease. Turturro, Clarke and Giamatti are particularly compelling as three versions of men whose flaws blind them in different ways. In contrast, Peters and Tatiana Maslany (as a legal scholar) don’t settle in as comfortably; they play their parts rather than embodying them.

Then again, none of the women are fully integrated into the film, an unfortunate irony given the blatant sexism their characters experienced in real life. McCarthy’s intention to acknowledge this egregious treatment is clear each time one of them hesitantly raises her hand or is silenced by an interruption. But when he takes them out of the meeting, he fumbles, turning them into representations and plot devices. This is particularly true for Bernadette (Nina Arianda), the stenographer tasked with both enlightening and kissing awkward young scientist Robert (Noah Robbins).

Mostly, however, he gets the details just right. This is never easy; too many contemporary dramas set during the ’70s and ’80s make a joke out of how old-fashioned everything feels. In contrast, production designer John P. Goldsmith and costume designer Melissa Toth do a fantastic job recreating a very specific moment with legitimate sincerity. Sure, the ever-present cigarettes and emissions-spewing muscle cars make a point. But it’s the layered approach that’s most impressive: the heavy hotel curtains, rumpled short-sleeve button-downs, limp lunch salads.

Best of all, though, are the timeless truths that emerge from this era-specific artifact, through the interpersonal dynamics and self-serving perspectives that each member brings to the table. Nearly 50 years on, it’s clear that climate change was inevitable. So the question McCarthy winds up handing us is even bigger: Is there any hope for human nature?

The post ‘A Statement’ Review: Tom McCarthy’s Climate Change Dramedy Is a Period Piece That Slyly Meets Our Moment appeared first on TheWrap.

The delight of experiencing “Behemoth!” is seeing how Gilroy transitions from scene to scene; mise-en-scène acts as springboards to various different eras in time while Damián García’s camera can be remarkably patient for scenes that one might expect to vibrate with spasmodic motion. Gilroy teases out the film’s serpentine movements when we first meet Alex (Pedro Pascal), a celebrated cellist who has moved from Chicago to LA to be a part of the score for a franchise film going under the working title “Behemoth!” Alex barely has time to string his bow before he’s being greeted by various band members who wonder where he has been and how he’s back. This social barrage of competing voices and disparate lines of questioning that Alex will have to distill into something coherent is all table-setting for when it happens again on a larger canvas, once Alex and the orchestra begin scoring the film.

At any given moment, the film jumps back in time to his days in Boston and Chicago, to when he begins to fall for his colleague, Nadia (Eva Victor). This jump between the present and past, bolstered by the movement of the film score, is what gives “Behemoth!” most of its electrifying structure. It’s not just non-linear, but fractured storytelling. We as the audience never know what might trigger a flashback, and the score of the film offers no cues either. It is a fascinating subversion of a chamber piece, showcasing the lives that can be lived within one bar of music, or how memories can coalesce into stanzas that we cannot help but play over in our heads. What is striking is when the music goes from diegetic to non-diegetic, and you do not realize that the film within the film’s score and the movie’s actual score are all the same. It is a clever way to showcase audibly how fiction and real life bleed into each other. 

This manifests in a thrilling sequence in which Alex recalls a moment when, after finishing a rehearsal, his ex, Carol (Olivia Wilde), went on the prowl for him in the building where he was practicing. As he tries to escape from her, the score that present-day Alex is scoring for “Behemoth!” is transposed over his past self’s escape attempt. All of a sudden, a simple walk down a hallway becomes tinged with a thriller-esque intensity; if the film had any other score in this moment, it would have changed the ambience completely, but by blending these elements together, Gilroy and his collaborators are able to imbue spectacle into life’s everyday beats. 

For a film of such scale and sonic ambition to work requires a performer like Pascal to be its north star, and the actor sells drama and emotion just by drawing his cello bow or tapping his foot. We feel him moved by the music he hears and plays, and García’s willingness to keep the camera trained on him reflects a trust that Pascal’s range of expressions fully honors. There are many moments where, as he listens to a piece of music from Nadia’s daughter, Viviana, we simply watch him get shattered. It is a testament to Pascal’s willingness to be present, to use so few words to communicate the enormity of emotion, that sells the film’s premise about the transformative power of music. 

As a character, Alex is passive though, and while that is endemic, it can occasionally create dissonance when other actors enter the frame, who do not always buttress him and more so bulldoze over him. Take Wilde, whose Carol is very much a portmanteau of her roles from this year, channeling the relational anxieties of Angela in “The Invite” and the ferocity of a woman scorned of Erika in “I Want Your Sex,” into a tornado of a performance that shines in its histrionic brevity. Victor is sadly underused, but in her interactions with Pascal, she brings the same witty, self-awareness and soulful interiority that makes it clear why anyone would fall for Nadia. All of the characters in “Behemoth!” struggle to take the craggy formations of emotion and chisel them into palatable spaces to walk on, and the beauty comes from witnessing their attempts to put words to the storms that brew within them.

Then again, part of how “Behemoth!” strikes a chord is in how music is its own language whose beauty perhaps lies in being wordless. One night, Alex goes to visit a grown-up (meaning: fifteen years old) Viviana, who is performing a concert of her experimental, alternative EDM tracks. She plays the song “Your God Is Sleeping” (brainchild of composer Lukas Frank), and Alex is swept up not only in the power of its rhythms, but in witnessing the people around him get lost in it just like him. With “Behemoth!,” Gilroy understands that there are moments in our lives where words seem insufficient to articulate what we feel or experience; sometimes the pains and regret we replay can be the only song we hear. Grace notes, though, are never far away, and maybe new music can be born from the chaos of our lives.

The post ‘Behemoth!’ Review: Director Tony Gilroy Forces Us to Face the Music In His Strikingly Original Love Letter to Movie Scores appeared first on TheWrap.

I do not mean that literally; Anderson and his crew captured the Geese frontman’s solo show on Dec. 11, 2025 with enough cameras to supply a whole borough of tourists, capturing the arresting set on lush and full 16mm and 35mm. In other words, it was a whole production, but there is an intimacy and warmth to this presentation akin to the types of videos one might record of their friends or family unexpectedly breaking into song.

That kinship and forbidden sense of discovery ripple throughout each of the 75 minutes that make up this documentary, resulting in a musical experience where the language of spiritual revival seems the most appropriate framework to employ. By keeping the film lean, focused, but most importantly curious, the film becomes not just an exercise in rote documentation but one of invitational stewardship: may we all strive to record beautiful scenes of our lives with this kind of creativity. 

Indeed, from the start, it is evident that Anderson wants to cut right to performance, eschewing any sort of introduction to who Cameron Winter is – something that could have been easily accomplished if Anderson and his crew decided to do person-on-the-street interviews with any member of the sold-out crowd. Yet the film keeps any setup to a minimum, focusing on ambient sounds (and not dialogue) above all else.

In these first few moments, we hear the rhythmic beeping of eager attendees getting their tickets scanned, the pitter-patter of all types of footwear prancing upon the wooden floors, the shuffling of bodies as they try to find seats. Not unlike the crowd that showed up a year ago, Anderson knows what the people are here to see, and these beats serve as a kind of sonic palate cleanser. Winter himself also wastes no time, and after nestling himself comfortably in the Steinway grand piano, he begins his concert. 

It is the gift of perspective that Anderson and his crew offer to this stationary performance that makes the film throb with a kind of urgency that can be so hard to capture in music documentaries. As the camera crew had permission to film from all angles, the film itself never settles for just one presentation. It gives the doc a novelty and edge because even if you were one of the lucky few to see Winter live, even if you were in the very front, there is no way you can see it from the perspective Anderson shows.

His camera might zoom in with affection and precision on Winter’s face while he sings “Love Takes Miles,” to the point where you can see his tufts of hair quiver, or it might shift focus to the upper rafters, looking at Winter from afar as if he’s a target that needs to be taken out by a sniper. 

You can feel Anderson and his crew being led by curiosity that, by default, will not stay still. They seem to view Winter’s stationary performance (he only gets up from the piano occasionally to stretch or drink water) as a creative challenge to unlock its dynamism. Depending on how a particular song might be lit, the team also shifts focus in ways that emphasize Winter’s isolation on stage but also his role in the larger audience collective. It can feel like the cinematic equivalent of a campfire, with Winter’s soulful tunes being the hearth that keeps us warm amidst the “carnivals of pain in life.”

Anderson’s film is focused and thoughtful, but also a little dangerous in its unpredictability within the concert film structure, which lends the movie its alluring power. 

It reminded me in many ways of what I appreciate about liturgical faith traditions. Liturgies, from their call-and-response dynamics to the recitation of common prayer, on the surface can seem limiting. Yet it is within that straitjacket, within the rehearsal of order, that the divine can work. This film models, in its own alchemical way, that very act of taking a concert and exploring the multitudes of experience within it. The film’s close-ups on Winter, where he’s often hunched over the piano as if he’s praying, feeling like he’s performing for an audience of one, speak further to this idea that what we’re witnessing is someone coming to terms in real time with who they are as an artist and creative. 

The other beauty of liturgy is the call to participate; there’s a role for people in the service, and “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall” is at its best when it reminds us that the act of listening to good music is not a passive experience of consumption.

In Winter’s song “Try As I May,” he croons “Try as I may / To love what fits in my hand / I don’t, I don’t.” In the context of this concert film, those lines feel tinged less with regret than overflowing love. With this project, Anderson, his collaborators, and Winter have made a work — clearly born out of love — that cannot fit in any one hand. We, as the audience, are invited to grasp at what they have made.

May we take hold of it and try to cherish it well. 

An exclusive North American 35mm tour of “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall“ begins on Nov. 20.

The post ‘Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall’ Review: Geese Frontman Takes Us to Church in Spellbinding Musical Odyssey appeared first on TheWrap.

There had been no rumblings of a New York-set offshoot of the 24-year-old “NCIS” franchise, let alone that it would find LL Cool J reprising his beloved “NCIS: Los Angeles” character, Special Agent Sam Hanna.

And yet with LL Cool J and CBS vet Scott Caan as its leads, “NCIS: New York” made so much sense that it was tempting to meet the surprise series order with a shrug. LL Cool J, after all, had slipped back into his Sam Hanna persona multiple times since “LA” ended in May 2023 — first with an arc on “NCIS: Hawai’i,” and then a few appearances on the mothership (the most recent of which aired one week after the “New York” news broke).

Caan meanwhile starred alongside Alex O’Loughlin on CBS’ “Hawaii Five-0” reboot for all of its 10 seasons, and even crossed over his character, HPD Detective Sergeant Danny Williams, to “NCIS: LA” in May 2012, where he shared scenes with — you guessed it — LL Cool J’s Sam. (The “NCIS” franchise is no stranger to such multiversal casting paradoxes.)

“NCIS: New York” also contains another important piece of “NCIS: LA” DNA in executive producer R. Scott Gemmill, who served as the very first “NCIS” spinoff’s showrunner for the second half of its 14-season run, and very much shepherded its more high-octane years. While showrunning HBO Max’s Emmy-winning “The Pitt” (which he created), Gemmill found time to develop “New York” with showrunner Byron Balasco (“Kingdom”), and the two co-wrote the pilot episode.

All of which is a long way of saying that “NCIS: New York,” on paper, was a fastball down the middle. The greatest TV franchise in the world meets the greatest city in the world? How could CBS say no?

In execution, though, the spinoff eclipses such modest expectations, due in large part to the performances by LL Cool J and Caan. Together, they demonstrate a delightful chemistry that is not limited to (pretty funny) jokes about their physical disparity. But they also shine as individuals.

No one would ever suggest that LL Cool J was not a “lead” on “NCIS: LA,” but Sam Hanna was arguably the brawn to the brains of his partner, Chris O’Donnell’s G. Callen. Save for the occasional Very Special Episode that involved a loved one (tragically widowed in the Season 8 finale, Sam currently has a grown daughter and son) or a fellow former Navy SEAL, Sam didn’t drive that much story.

With “NCIS: New York,” however, LL Cool J (born James Todd Smith) meets the moment of being No. 1 on the call sheet (as well as an executive producer). In addition to commanding the screen as a hulk of a human being, the actor/rapper effortlessly earns your engagement as a viewer by seizing this chance to play deeper, nuanced moments. Sam hails from Queens, yes, but he hasn’t called New York home in a minute. Nor, as he declares in the pilot, is he looking to join a new team. So if he is going to elect to stick around (instead of continuing with James Bond-like solo missions, as sampled in this series’ cold open), character development can only follow. LL Cool J has said that in this spinoff, Sam is “in search of redemption” — though from exactly what, we do not yet know.

It’s Caan, though, who really surprises, as Special Agent Nick Schaeffer. If you assumed Caan would be serving up yet another variation on the wise-cracking, slightly dickish archetype he launched in 2001 with the “Ocean’s Eleven” film franchise, revisited on HBO’s “Entourage,” refined across a decade of “Five-0,” and recently rehashed with Fox’s “Alert: MPU,” that is not the case. Raised in Bay Ridge among a family “of cops and fire,” established from go as a bit of a ribeye-and-martini snob, and more clever than caustic with his quips, Nick is, refreshingly, one of the most mature characters Caan has had the chance to play.

In the pilot, Nick offers careful consideration of his “temporary” partner’s situation as they investigate the alleged suicide of a longtime friend of Sam’s who’d been working as a tug boat captain. That episode (the only one available for review at press time) builds to a speech from Nick, set at the foot of a handsomely lit Queensboro Bridge, that is heartfelt, incisive and quite moving — and that just might be enough to compel Sam to make camp where his story began, in the Big Apple.

Every “NCIS” spinoff is informed and distinguished by its locale, be it New Orleans, Oahu, Bucharest or Camp Pendleton circa 1991. In the modern tradition of “FBI,” “Blue Bloods” and “White Collar,” “NCIS: New York” showcases and thus effectively co-stars The City That Never Sleeps. The first episode is rife with wide shots that make clear the show is filming on location (and not cheating with, say, Toronto), and features excursions to Red Hook and Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn, and Central Park. Will Sam come to miss the car chases that he and Callen got drawn into on the streets of L.A.? In trade for the occasional foot chase into the MTA subway system? We shall see.

Sandwiched on Tuesday nights between “NCIS” and the prequel spinoff “NCIS: Origins,” and as the long-running franchise’s latest entry, “NCIS: New York” is of course poised to host crossovers. In fact, “NCIS” vet Brian Dietzen pops up in the first episode (via video chat) as D.C.-based medical examiner Dr. Jimmy Palmer. Other such cameos are likely to follow. (Hey, maybe we’ll also meet Nick’s identical cousin, Danny…?)

The cast also includes Jennifer Beals (“The L Word”) as Special Agent in Charge Robyn Wells, Jacqueline Byers (“Salvation”) as Special Agent Addison “Addy” Ross, Shane Harper (“Power Book IV: Force”) as Special Agent Wyatt Sellers, and Devin Druid (“13 Reasons Why”) as Tech Specialist Sean Sullivan.

The pilot allows little time for intros, but in short: Addy is full of swagger and a little “mean,” with a father who is a felon; Wyatt is a wholesome import from Alaska who’s been dubbed “Milkman” and is newly jilted; and Sean is said to have a “broken moral compass” (which tracks since we learn he is begrudgingly mashing keyboards for NCIS instead of serving time for an audacious hack). And can’t forget about Sid (played by Duncan), a Staffordshire Terrier and key member of the team. Byers and Harper enjoy an easy chemistry as the other team of partners working alongside Sam and Nick, while Beals suits up nicely as the SAC and gets amusing scenes to play as Robyn wrangles bratty Sean. Not one “NCIS” has come out of the gate with a so-so ensemble, and based on the first episode alone, that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Sadly, “NCIS: New York” continues a trend started by “NCIS: Hawai’i” and picked up on by “Origins” and “Tony & Ziva,” in that it has no opening theme per se. Instead, for the time being at least, there’s only the briefest of title cards with subway cars zipping behind it. Even so, it’s an “NCIS” through and through.

“NCIS: New York” premieres Tuesday on CBS and streams the next day on Paramount+.

The post ‘NCIS: New York’ Review: LL Cool J and Scott Caan Level Up in Latest Spinoff appeared first on TheWrap.

Flanagan — acting as both showrunner and frequent director here — has always been open about the fact his version of the story is very different from King’s original text. What’s interesting, though, is that he goes well beyond contemporizing “Carrie” (which has a modern setting, 52 years after the original novel). This isn’t just “what if Chris Hargensen had a cell phone?” That would be a sufficient cruelty on its own, of course, but Flanagan’s never been one to settle for sufficient.

Instead he opts for a modern day blitzkrieg that attacks Carrie White from all sides, exploring not just the contemporary hell that it is to be a girl in high school, but the present-day warzones we send our children to.

We immediately see Carrie’s (Summer H. Howell) innocence used as a tool to break through the societal numbness toward what have become everyday atrocities. To her confusion, she has to walk through a metal detector on her first day of school. Next, there’s an active shooter drill that leaves the sheltered girl paralyzed with fear. Shortly after, Principal Grayle (Matthew Lillard) tells an enraged Margaret (Samantha Sloyan) that “they’ve been doing this since grade school.” At which point Carrie’s mother can only smile angrily and whisper, “What a horrific thing to say.”

It sounds so simple, of course. We constantly tell ourselves and our peers not to become numb to the atrocities that take place in our schools (and our malls, and our churches, and our concerts…). But we do and we have, and there is something so striking about seeing someone completely sheltered from it react to how gun violence has proliferated our day to day lives.

These themes loom large over the season, with Chris’ (Alison Thornton) standard bullying and Sue’s (Siena Agudong) familiar complicity running along in tandem with the horrors. Themes, though, are nothing without the foundation of performance and screenwriting. We’ve already celebrated Flanagan’s contributions, but thousands of words could be written about the performances of Howell and Sloyan as Carrie and Margaret alone. This is far from Howell’s first credit. She celebrates a significant tenure in the genre sphere already, but what comes out of her as Carrie White is something new altogether. It’s hard to remain believable when you’re expected to shift from kind to furious to terrified to powerful on a dime, but Howell proved she was more than up to the task.

Sloyan has been a longtime collaborator of Flanagan’s. Each new story drags something different out of the actor, and she’s frequently celebrated as the best performance in a small sea of exceptional talent in each of their dealings, but Margaret White is in a different league. Prime Video’s “Carrie” slightly softens some aspects of the telekinetic’s mother, but what they choose to make gentler only makes her cruelty more horrific. There was no better choice for the role than Sam Sloyan, who gives a career-best performance here.

While Howell and Sloyan are notable standouts, there simply isn’t a bad performance in the bunch. This should be a tall order, given the nuances that seem to exist with each character. Everyone’s concerned (the genuine kind, not the “aw, poor her” kind), nearly all of them are complicit, and very few do anything at all. Well deserved supporting shoutouts go to Lillard, Amber Midthunder’s Rita, Michael Trucco’s sleazy Mr. Hargensen, and Tim Bagley’s kindly counselor, Mr. Morten, but everyone involved should be patting themselves on the back.

Set design might have been an afterthought under a different showrunner, especially given how much time we spend in individual houses. Every detail matters in a Flanagan joint though, and “Carrie” is no exception. Each room in each of the respective homes of the teens matters, and the attention to detail quietly elevates the mundane in a way that many wouldn’t miss but is appreciated all the same. Oh, and there’s a De Palma Retrospective marquee on main street that acts as a nice little nod to the very first “Carrie” adaptation.

Similarly essential but equally understated is the Newton Brothers’ score. It’s there to quietly build emotion in the way that you’d expect it to, but it never crowds the soundtrack which both plays a bigger role than in Flanagan’s previous work and also happens to be an absolute banger. Hats off to music supervisor Justine von Winterfeldt, who really cooked here.

Flanagan’s biggest trick with “Carrie” is also his least expected: what if the quintessential ending that we’ve all known over these last five decades wasn’t really the end at all? The blood rains down on Carrie White not in the final episode, but the penultimate, soaking the girl desperately clinging to her last shred of kindness while holding back her jaw dropping power. It’s at this moment that you realize that every change, from Tommy’s (Joel Oulette) shift in motivation when it came to asking Carrie to the prom to the introduction of the original character Emaline (Thalia Dudek) was preparing the audience for something new entirely.

There’s a strong chance that “something new” is divisive, and not because of purist frustrations over adaptive liberties. “Carrie” doesn’t end in a cliffhanger so much as it ends with a hefty dose of nuance and a lot of unanswered questions. But Carrie White isn’t the only telekenetic in the world, and she’s far from the only one with the shine. Exploring what the world looks like in the aftermath of her chaos is certainly intriguing, if you have the patience and trust for it. When it comes to television, no one has earned that trust more than Flanagan.

Though it’d be a pity not to play longer in this universe, “Carrie” stands entirely on its own if you can handle the open ended ideas presented at the end of the series. Everything that leads to that showcases Flanagan’s trademark care and his longstanding stable of actors deliver in all the ways we know they can alongside Flanafam newcomers like Howell and Agudong.

The contemporization experiment for Carrie White’s story is a resounding success backed up by a banger soundtrack and sufficient teen angst.

“Carrie” premieres Wednesday, Oct. 7, on Prime Video.

The post ‘Carrie’ Review: Mike Flanagan Brilliantly Turns Stephen King’s Nightmare Into a Horrific Teen TV Series appeared first on TheWrap.

The seven-hour adaptation of John Steinbeck’s epic novel that actress Zoe Kazan scripted and co-produced for Netflix is quite a departure from her grandpa Elia’s 1955 CinemaScope movie.

The series covers the whole, decades-long narrative, not just its final year during World War I. The younger Kazan treats her characters with humanistic sensitivity for the most part, eschewing the florid Method melodrama her elder favored.

I wouldn’t infer that Zoe intended to out-icon Elia’s use of James Dean here. But if she had, mission damn close to accomplished.

Pugh brings all she’s got to reluctant Salinas Valley farm wife Cathy turned Kate, the wickedest brothel madame west of the Sierras. You can’t take your eyes off the actress whatever dolled-up, beat-up or stone cold real condition the character is in.

Cathy is considered one of the great villains of American literature, and Pugh glories in every deceitful, manipulative, murderous impulse Steinbeck dreamed up and then some. But more compelling in Kazan’s intuitive interpretation, she’s a fierce and cunning fighter for her own agency. Schooled from early adolescence in the lustful ways of men, Cathy/Kate maintains moral rationalizations that, hypocritical as it may be for a weaponizing quick learner, puts viewers on her side far more often than good people ought to be.

Pugh does this to us with overt and subtle skills that complement Cathy’s sociopath-as-turn-of-the-century-sex-kitten bag of tricks. She rarely overemphasizes anything that’s not a physical act, and thereby relatably unveils the woman’s psyche.

The coolest contradiction the actress brings to the role is a core honesty that reveals Cathy’s real motives, no matter how sweet or pliant she pretends to be. Pugh can strike a marvelous, dazed stance when Cathy is honest with some lovestruck bastard who won’t believe her. Later moments of guilt-ridden dementia aren’t quite as effective — beautiful monsters are just more fun than handsomely aging ones — but Pugh’s full commitment to any business at hand is never to be questioned.

And she looks incredible in Kirsty Cameron’s late Victorian and Edwardian costumes. As well as out of them. The show’s plentiful carnal activities are graphic and quite kinkier than Steinbeck probably imagined, and way more than a 1950s filmmaker would have been permitted to.

Whether you find that excessive or not, it adds crucial spice to Zoe’s ambitious project. She wanted to tell the whole, 600-page doorstop of a book’s tale, and she does dutifully. Thrillingly too, whenever Pugh is onscreen.

Which is about half the time. The rest is a male weepy that can play like homework, often failing to sell the angst.

Mike Faist brings a little roiling danger to the role of Charles Trask, but he’s essentially written-out by Episode 3. As his sibling — and the main protagonist of this piece — Adam Trask, Christopher Abbott internalizes pain to the point of catatonia, so that when he does lash out it’s nothing like Raymond Massey’s holy terror of 1955.

Adam and Charles are the older generation of resentful Trask brothers here, and however dreary matters can get, it is rewarding to see how their conflicts and compromises filter down to the twins, Cal and Aron, that the movie focused on.

Of course, Dean played Adam’s less-loved son in the best-known adaptation of the painfully biblical allegory — then died, only to live forever. Let us be gentle, then, toward young Joseph Zada, who does his best to embody bad-seeded Cal beneath the martyred legend’s shadow. Richard Avalos was hardly as memorable as the movie’s Aron, but in 2026 the “good son’s” dissolution somehow seems more abrupt and superficial. Joe Anders, who plays him, was more affecting in Apple TV’s sleaze-a-thon expansion of “Cape Fear” earlier this year.

The series’ sole compelling masculine role benefits from a bit of Zoe’s flexibly feminism. Hoon Lee, who consistently registers the best performance on “Your Friends and Neighbors,” plays Lee. He’s the Chinese-American servant Steinbeck assigned to raise Cal and Aron after Cathy ran away soon after their birth. He performs both mom and dad duties while Adam mopes around for years, cooking and nurturing and handing down emotional wisdom as well as that from the vast number of books he’s read. Kazan rightfully expands his story while Lee the actor keeps the character real enough to, for the most part, move past Magical Asian cliches.

With an observant, calm voice, Lee recounts racist horrors and less macro aggressions that plagued his and his people’s lives. His angry outbursts are few but rattling, and while he lets the oblivious — or are they simply uninterested? — white guys know how much of his own ambitions he’s sacrificed for them, the man’s love for the boys and their exasperating father never really falters. It’s a tricky role that Lee navigates magnificently.

And, like Pugh’s, it’s a midcentury characterization of a twice-as-old archetype filtered through 2020s sensibilities. Done with a preference for naturalistic presentation, this feels like a valid way to update a key American generational saga.

Like some of its drama, the new production’s impeccably evoked era and settings can look a bit hemmed-in compared to the lavish, boom-or-bust California the movie created. TV budgets — and “East of Eden” clearly had a nice one — can’t account for the visual genius it takes to turn an ice house into a repository of furtive desire and bad business decisions, or make a stalled Ferris Wheel pregnant with wayward possibilities.

But things change, even as old patterns sort of repeat along with them. That’s always been what happens in “East of Eden” and in the nation it examines through one family’s fortunes and follies.

Zoe Kazan is of course aware of her talented, beloved grandpa’s besmirched reputation: Elia named names during the Communist witch hunts. She’s made her Steinbeck adaptation, while striving to do the novel full justice, her own stubborn thing.

It’s all rather typically, and more than a little admirably, American.

“East of Eden” is now streaming on Netflix.

The post ‘East of Eden’ Review: Florence Pugh Astounds as Steinbeck’s Wickedest Villain in Vast Netflix Retelling appeared first on TheWrap.

None of those mutations were ever going to happen, of course, but if B-movie filmmakers made movies about plausible scenarios, like dying slowly from radiation poisoning, the teenagers at the local drive-in would be too depressed to make out in the backseats of their cherry red Buick Skylarks. So instead we got films about nonsense like giant mollusks, and decades later the trend continued with films about piranhacondas and lavalantulas.

The point is, audiences have not been trained to take movies about giant killer animals seriously. Even the rare big budget versions, like Luis Llosa’s all-star 1997 classic “Anaconda,” are usually so cheesy they ooze smoked gruyère. So you have to give director Mike P. Nelson credit: His giant snake movie “Beware Boiúna” is honest to goodness, nasty, mean-spirited nightmare fuel. It’s the kind of film that could give the giant killer animal genre a good name.

‘Beware Boiúna’ stars Jessica Rothe (“Happy Death Day”) as Alli, a medical student on a humanitarian mission in the Amazon. Alli and her cohorts — don’t get too attached — work their way down the river, delivering medicine and removing botflies from people’s backs in stomach-churning closeups. The movie gets to the big snake parts eventually, but first Nelson sets the mood: sweaty and disquieting.

Alli and the rest of her team run into contractors with dubious ethics; they’re surveying the rainforest so they can tear it down properly. When Alli and the boat’s engineer Lena (Kiana Madeira, “Fear Street”) get attacked by one of these goons, they accidentally kill him. Then they toss him in the river, enraging the dead guy’s brother, Brennan (Logan Marshall-Green), who vows revenge.

In real life, “vowing revenge” is a weird thing to do. To this film’s credit, at least one of the guys in Brennan’s party wants no part of it. The rest of them chase our heroes down the Amazon into protected waters, where, wouldn’t you know it, there’s a really huge snake. So huge, in fact, that it’s probably not a natural phenomenon. It might very well be the mythical god Boiúna, a territorial beast who decides who lives and who dies (and almost always chooses “death”).

Boiúna is a panic attack of a monster, so gigantic that it’s almost impossible to completely capture her on camera. This might sound like an excuse to cheap out on the monster effects but Nelson finds a way to make it terrifying. Boiúna is the size of a subway train, but it could lurk anywhere in the dense Amazon jungle. And when it’s underwater, it’s unthinkably fast. There are scenes in “Beware Boiúna” where one of the few characters that makes it to the second half of the film stares in awetruck horror as the monster worms slowly next to them. Even without a wider angle, Nelson forces the audience to drink in the insanity-inducing scale of the scaly behemoth.

There’s not a lot to “Beware Boiúna” from a story perspective, but the script by Nelson, Tony Giglio and Alan B. McElroy efficiently hammers its points, introducing the characters and themes clearly and then throwing a humongous serpent god into the mix. There aren’t many protagonists or villains who stick around long enough to reveal that they have depth, but the ones who do are interesting individuals struggling with their survival instincts, who are genuinely torn about whether saving another person’s life is worth risking their own. The attention paid to these characters’ inner turmoil makes “Beware Boiúna” play like a work of horror, not just a campy popcorn flick.

It’s important not to oversell Nelson’s film just because it’s one of the best giant killer animal movies in a long, long time. For one thing, that’s not a high bar, even though “Beware Boiúna” leapfrogs over it with clearance to spare. It’s just a really, really scary movie about a really, really, really big snake. It’s got great actors who take the material seriously, and the material is good enough to deserve all their effort. It’s about colonialism, and that theme matters. It adds weight to all this nerve-shattering serpent mayhem.

If every movie in the giant killer animal genre was as frightening as “Beware Boiúna,” you’d never look at a giant snake the same way again. Or a giant locust. Or a mansquito. Or a dinocroc. Or a supergator. Or a frankenfish. Or a piranhaconda. Or a lavalantula. Or a sharktopus. Or a pteracuda. Or a whalewolf. Or a…

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The fastest way to describe director Michael Showalter’s film adaptation is if the Marie Kondo “I Love Mess” meme met 2026’s version of an erotic thriller. They ain’t what they used to be, but it’s nice to see any film try in our strangely sexless era of cinema. There does appear to be at least a level of self awareness when it comes to realizing that the sexiness of the film is necessary, as “Verity” relies on two things to succeed: the performances of its leads and how hot everyone is.

Anne Hathaway’s Verity Crawford is an ailing author who needs a ghostwriter to finish her latest book; Dakota Johnson’s Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling author about to lose her house; and Josh Hartnett’s Jeremy is just a boy who is in love with a girl, but also in love with this other girl, and also really does (actually) love his kids. The premise is very silly, and the execution often meets that energy even if it isn’t meant to.

Still, “Verity” is, on occasion, very hot.

Hathaway is playing Verity as what we’ll call “camp light.” She doesn’t go full Grand High Witch here, but she’s doing the most in every scene we see her in. Specifically, there’s a cadence to her voice that makes nearly everything seem disingenuous. Eventually, it becomes clear that her lack of sincerity is a choice meant to allude to certain deceptions, but in execution, it mostly just plays as distracting. 

Meanwhile, Hartnett’s “aw shucks” energy serves him well here. Though, perhaps himbo was a bit of a misnomer — his kindness does come into question several times throughout the film. Regardless of the label, he’ll keep you guessing about his motives until the very end. As for Johnson, she’s had her sex appeal on full display for much of her filmography, and Showalter takes full advantage of the actress’ comfort with her body. There’s not much to Lowen, but that’s kind of the point of the character. 

It seems that the goal of “Verity” is to keep the audience guessing through the closing credits. It does accomplish its task but, with a runtime of nearly two hours, you have to wonder if it does so with one too many twists. Nick Antosca delivers a serviceable screenplay, but it’s overstuffed with shock-and-awe that very rarely lands.

Case in point: One of the best scenes of the film takes place in the first five minutes, featuring Lowen covered in someone else’s blood after an unexpected (and very fatal) accident. It serves as a murderous meet-cute between her and Jeremy, but probably didn’t need to go on as long as it did. That’s the case for much of “Verity,” unfortunately. 

Cinematographer Jim Frohna — who has collaborated with Showalter in the past on “The Idea of You” and several other films — does shoot one pretty picture, though. The cinematography is intentionally over the top, but in a way that remains visually appealing throughout. It’s rare to have a specific reason to call out a location manager in a review, but Elizabeth Krekel found one hell of a house for “Verity.” It doesn’t just act as Frohna’s playground, with mirrors, glass, contrasting architecture and a crap load of Vs playing throughout the structure; it also feels like a character in its own right thanks to production designer Amy Williams. The Crawfords’ house is a prison, and “Verity” has no intention of telling you who it’s keeping trapped.

The runtime of “Verity” is a significant barrier, and its screenplay thinks it’s a bit too smart for its own good. The film has its feet in two worlds: one is a super serious psychological thriller that wants you to question your belief in the truth, and the other is a slightly campy, sexy, nonsense story that has no interest in the truth and just wants everyone to make out. Either one would have been great, but playing on both sides of the fence doesn’t do Showalter’s film any favors.

Still, for all its issues, “Verity” feels like the perfect movie to put on with your girlfriends. It might not hold everyone’s attention, but it’s probably great fun to scream-laugh with as the absurdities unfold.

In the end, the film wants you to ask yourself whose reality is true. Did she do it? Did he? Are all of them bad? Was it Colonel Mustard with the candle stick?! I don’t know that “Verity” is noteworthy enough to spark that continued conversation long after the credits roll, but you might have some fun along the way.

“Verity” opens exclusively in theaters Oct. 2.

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There’s a similar confused-message problem regarding the LGBTQ community in Else Went’s new play, “Degenerates,” which had its world premiere Tuesday at Playwrights Horizons. At first glance, the play isn’t about gays but rather the incel community. Since I had to look up the word “incel” and could not come up with a more concise definition, here’s what I found in the dictionary: “incel: a member of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile toward women and men who are sexually active.”

For equally ignorant theatergoers, the lobby at Playwrights Horizons provides a bulletin board full of slang terms used by the incel community. These men hate someone they call a Chad, “any man perceived to be physically attractive enough to find sexual partners without much effort”; and they hate a Stacy, “a woman who projects femininity in a way viewed as explicitly inviting sexual attention, and who is presumed to be unattainable by the ‘average’ man, a female Chad.”

Surprise, surprise. The first act of “Degenerates,” which lasts nearly two hours, is basically a two-hander between Miller (Zachary Desmond), a closeted gay men, and Target (Christopher Dylan White), a closeted trans person who has not yet transitioned. I haven’t put up a spoiler alert here, because, while both characters claim to be straight cis men at the get-go, it doesn’t take Went’s play long to blow their respective covers.

Miller and Target, after knowing each other well online in the incel community, finally meet in person. Both rarely leave their respective abodes, but when they connect in person, no time is wasted getting down to some very graphic gay sex. Miller was a virgin, Target intimates having been raped — but both characters are way too proficient at what they do in bed, as well as on the floor, to make either claim unbelievable. Unfortunately, the playwright and director Emma Rosa Went apparently expect us to take Miller and Target at their word.

Act two of “Degenerates” lasts only 45 minutes. While the aforementioned sexual encounter propels Target to seek hormone therapy, Miller becomes even more self-loathing. When he returns to the incel chat room, he not only doubles down on his hatred of women; he encourages a guy named Kemp (Tyler Nowell Felix) to commit suicide because he can’t attract women. Miller even goes so far as to put on a suit and tie to take this hate-women movement national. It’s assumed that he often leaves his apartment to become Mr. Incel USA.

As evidenced here, both Desmond and White are very fine actors. White easily makes the transition from fake straight guy to curious gay guy to real trans person. No actor, however, could make the ridiculous transition that Went’s play requires of Desmond.

Who knew that the real problem of rampant misogyny of America is men who just can’t admit they’re queer?

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Tom Cruise is Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon who only cares about two things: money and his 30-year-old cat that desperately wants to die. Digger won’t let it, because he’s a selfish man. Likewise, the people of Earth desperately want to live, but Digger won’t let them because, again, he’s a selfish man. He ignores every warning about his drilling operations in Greenland until it’s officially too late. Methane gas destroys his machines, kills his workers, and ejects a giant glacier heading towards northern Europe, with a projected death toll that can barely be imagined.

Naturally, Digger responds by protecting himself from legal liability and spinning the scenario in his favor. The boorish President Compson, played (well, mostly shouted) by John Goodman, turns to Digger to fix this crisis because it’s a lot of work and Compson has other things on his mind. Riz Ahmed plays Digger’s environmental scientist Ganesh, who gradually goes bonkers in the billionaire’s orbit, appalled by the staggering lack of humanity.

Everything in “Digger” is over the top and two-dimensional except the production design, which is over the top but multifaceted and astounding. It reflects the film’s only noteworthy storytelling decision (which I won’t ruin the specifics of) and forces us to accept that the artificiality of “Digger” is Iñárritu’s thesis.

But that doesn’t mean his thesis is smart. “Digger” argues that what people really want is to watch billionaires lampooned with slightly less depth than a late-night talk show monologue. We are powerless to stop them, but we do get to point and giggle. And that’s supposed to be enough.

“Digger” claims there are good billionaires. They’re the ones who made “Digger” and they’re willing to let us laugh so long as the commentary is impotent. The cynicism boggles the mind. Even after Iñárritu accepts their rubber stamp, and portrays the worst people in the world as meaningless cartoons, he finds a way to hold back. Wile E. Coyote got to blow up Foghorn Leghorn with a Rube Goldberg machine while a chorus sang “beep beep beep” over the 1812 Overture. Here, when we finally learn what happens to Digger Rockwell, let’s just say he gets off anticlimactically light, just as Iñárritu finally starts taking his story in ghoulish, potentially cathartic directions. The most unbelievable thing about “Digger,” sadly, is the idea that this production deserves applause. Except, again, for the production design. And maybe Tom Cruise.

Cruise hasn’t done this much caps-locked “ACTING” in many years. He certainly hasn’t been this energized since his amusing cameo in “Tropic Thunder,” where he played Digger Rockwell if Digger Rockwell was a Hollywood power player without a wacky accent. Nobody doubts Tom Cruise can captivate a crowd, and in “Digger” he certainly does, sometimes in long, show-off takes that serve no other function than to prove Tom Cruise can do it. As if performing what’s essentially live theater is as impressive a stunt as jumping out of an airplane from the top of the atmosphere.

Tom Cruise gives Iñárritu precisely what the director demands. If only the filmmaker demanded something more, something which actually warrants this film’s onanistic ovations. It’s not enough to make fun of the people destroying the world. You also have to announce you’re brilliant for doing it, that a billionaire approved your jokes and that the audience should thank you for giving them an opportunity to titter.

“Digger” is what happens when you give the week’s worst “Saturday Night Live” sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur. It will probably win lots of awards. I’d say it deserves the ones for production design; then again, “Backrooms” came out this year. So never mind. I guess I wouldn’t.

“Digger” opens exclusively in theaters on Oct. 2.

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